Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Setting the Way-Back machine for 2008

Full disclosure. This is a re-post... from ten years ago. Why? Several reasons. I've answered over 3,500 Friday Questions. But since people rarely go back through the archives, most of these questions are are buried yet deserve another look. Also, I'm juggling a number of things and need a break. So from time to time this month I plan on slipping in some of these "vintage" Friday Question days. Readers always tell me Friday Questions are one of their favorite features, so I figure it wouldn't hurt to sprinkle in a few more this month. Enjoy all over again

Friday questions day. You can’t start a weekend without them.

Eric L has two things he wants to know:

Weird question I've always wondered- where exactly did those paintings from the opening credits of CHEERS come from?

The
opening credits were created by Castle-Bryant. They found old
pictures of folks in bars and built that montage. I understand though
one or two photos are actually people in a barbershop.

And secondly…

After
CHEERS ended was there ever any thought given to spinning off another
character besides Frasier? In retrospect Frasier was obviously the
perfect choice and besides Rebecca was probably the only character who
could have had a life outside of the bar environment, but when the time
came to discuss a spin off of CHEERS were there any other options?

Yes.
NBC wanted to spin-off Norm & Cliff. They must have approached us
five times about writing it. We always passed. One AfterMASH a
career is enough. There was also some discussion of spinning-off Carla
but that went nowhere. Remember, there was another spin-off of CHEERS
(besides FRASIER) – THE TORTELLIS. Carla’s creepy ex-husband Nick (played
to slimeball perfection by Dan Hedeya) and his new wife Loretta (the
delightfully daft Jean Kasem) move to Las Vegas with one or two of her
kids. It lasted maybe thirteen weeks. The Charles Brothers (who were
just consulting it) asked David and I to write one as a favor. We met
with them all day trying to come up with a story and couldn’t do it.
Finally, I said, “What episode is this we’re trying to break?” The
answer was five. I said, “Five? Jesus. If stories are that hard to
break by episode five you are in shit shape with this show!” They
were.

Remember kids when creating a pilot: It’s not just about the funny characters and setting. Make your show ABOUT SOMETHING.

Some
older shows (I think Cheers was one) feature a voiceover of a lead
actor saying "[Name of show] was filmed before a live studio audience."
All in the Family had a kind of pretentious one with Carroll O’Conner
saying something to the effect it was "played before a studio audience
for live responses". Was this just to say "Hey, we aren't using a
laugh track!" (Pretty obvious in shows with teen stars where actors have
to wait for entrance applause and squealing to die down. And the ever
annoyng "Awwww!" and "Ooohhhhhh" that greeted any emotional dialogue.

Yes,
CHEERS employed that disclaimer after the first few episodes because we
were getting complaints about the laugh track when in fact the laughs
were real.

I agree there is nothing more insipid than audiences
“Awwwwing” at those awful treacley moments in bad sitcoms. First of
all, the moments are rarely earned and the audiences sounds like the
biggest simps on the planet. Webster cleaned his room like his mommy
asked. Awwwwwwwwwwwww.

On CHEERS and any other show I worked on, those cringeworthy reactions were lifted from the soundtrack.

Same
with applauding when actors entered scenes. It obliterates any
reality and is there anything more artificial and unbelievable than
people wildly cheering Fran Drescher?

The other audience we would
lose from the soundtrack is any talking back to the actors during the
scene. One night on CHEERS we had a particularly rowdy and vociferous
bunch. Diane headed for Sam’s office and they yelled, “DON’T GO
THROUGH THAT DOOR, GIRL!!” And my favorite: Diane standing up to Sam
and someone screaming, “YOU TELL HIM, BITCH!!!!” Needless to say, that
threw off Shelley Long’s timing just a wee bit.

27 comments
:

Last week's "Mom" had an "awwww" moment, rare for the series, but what else would you expect when Bonnie enters Adam's apartment with a golden retriever puppy? (His elderly German shepherd Samson, whom we saw in a previous episode, had crossed the Rainbow Bridge.)

When ALL IN THE FAMILY was "played to a studio audience for live responses", that wasn't the same as being performed in front of a studio audience. This disclaimer started in Season 9 (after Gloria & Mike left). It meant that the show was taped with no audience, then the tape was played back to an audience for live reaction.

I also hate the "Awww!" moments from studio audiences, especially in shows like THREE'S COMPANY, where Janet or Terry was hurt & trying to hold back tears. I watch sitcoms, especially that one, to laugh, not to have a diabetic reaction.

Wow, the things you learn from long-ago TV shows! You'd think by reading Ken's comments about the audience of "Cheers" that some of them in the seats were Rocky Horror Picture Show fans! And the idea that the reactions to Webster finally agreeing to clean his room are the same kind that reacted to Sam and Diane finally kissing is also something that I can't believe but then I wasn't there for either taping! I do remember watching "Happy Days" and seeing Fonzie always getting loud claps whenever he first gets on stage and then seeing Kramer on "Seinfeld" getting the same kind of reaction during that show's early seasons (thankfully, rid of after a while). This was also the same kind of reaction Jennifer Cooledge got on "2 Broke Girls" (a show I stopped watching after three seasons). I'm just glad real laugh tracks of "Gilligan's Island", "The Beverly Hillbillies", and "The Flintstones" not to mention "M*A*S*H" are no more. Of course, with the president we have now, maybe that would make his comments go down easier and sound even more deliciously ridiculous...

My wife and I were trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix a while ago and it made me want you to tell us what to watch.

Would you be willing to create a playlist for Cheers, Mash and Frasier? Episodes you liked for some reason, and maybe explain why? It’d be interesting and would save us the trouble of trying to figure out what to watch. Even episodes you didn’t like would be interesting.

I think Norman Lear used to complain that the All in the Family audience sounded too much like a laugh track, hence the disclaimer. It's always interesting to note the human touches from live viewers, like James Brooks' distinctive laugh or the squeals of teenage girls attending a performance of The Honeymooners. I wonder if those girls ever tell their great-grandchildren, "That was me screaming at Art Carney"?

I think you should be in the Guinness Book for writing your column ever single day for 10 years. So yeah, repeats are totally cool. After a certain age you can start just repeating old columns and I wouldn't notice.

Friday question: The only exception I can think of to the Cheers/Frasier no applause standard was when Ted Danson guest starred on Frasier. The audience welcomed his entrance with much fanfare. I feel it was well-deserved in his case, but do you know if there was discussion of removing it to keep consistent with previous guest-star episodes?

Norm and Cliff were excellent supporting characters, among my top favorites. But what makes a loveable supporting character won't necessarily make a good anchor character. Often its just the opposite. I Love Lucy was probably the last show that could really get away with a zany lead characters, and that's because Lucy was, at the heart of all of it, still a classy lady. How she could stuff chocolates down her blouse or set her silly putty nose on fire one minute and totally have your respect the next is, I guess, just why everybody loved Lucy.

A lot of craziness on a show can be fun, but there has to be someone who the audience can relate to.

"Remember kids when creating a pilot: It’s not just about the funny characters and setting. Make your show ABOUT SOMETHING."

Ok, stupid question here - and yes, there are stupid questions, one of which I am about to pose....

How was the show about Carla's ex-husband not "about something" different from Friends or Cheers? What is Friends about? What was Cheers about? A group of friends dating and living life? A bar filled with eclectic locals?

I'm not trying to be insulting. I truly don't understand. Which is probably why you've made a living winning Emmys for brilliant TV shows and I...well I own a TV. And I know how to turn it on.

Live audience reactions don't really mean a lot. An audience can have a tepid reaction to a joke yet, be amplified to make it sound better. And as you mentioned in a previous blog some shows have audiences for their dress rehersals and use the best laugh from either performance. I've also heard that some shows hire "professional laughers." The idea being that laughter is contagious. So, if one or two people start laughing others may join in. As for annoying reactions, on I LOVE LUCY you often hear an, "Uh oh" right before Lucy is about to get into trouble. Its the same voice every time so, I think it must be a recording. Maybe 50's viewers were different, but it seems kind of insulting today. It broadcasts the upcoming gag; as if you didn't already know what was going to happen. M.B.

Anonymous: I was listening to the Nerdist podcast with Mayim Bialik and Chuck Lorre yesterday, and they talk a lot about sitcoms being "about" something. Lorre pitched THE BIG BANG THEORY as a show about very smart physicists who had trouble navigating real life. MOM, he said, is about hope that recovery is possible.

FRIENDS always seemed to me about a group of people supporting each other to find their way into adult life. I didn't watch it much, but at a guess CHEERS was about finding a refuge from daily life.

@Anonymous: I'll take a stab at this, and I have no idea what the original pitches were.

"What is Friends about?"

In the first series, it was about six characters (three female, three male, which was an unusual balance) who all have back-stories and are "forced" to live together and share them. Monica is Ross' sister. Ross is pining for Rachel. Chandler isn't quite sure what he wants to do, but he's male-bonding with Joey. And Phoebe ... is from outer space. You could practically allow these characters to go full Improv, and it would work.

After the first series, who knows? Guest stars, cross-overs, mostly happy fun hugs and general laziness. It was never the same after the first series. (I was first on the block to watch the first episode!)

"What was Cheers about?"Washed-up alcoholic baseball player buys a bar. First five series: tragi-comic relationship between baseball player and washed-up tee-totalling wannabe academic. With the best Greek Chorus you will ever see, written by Aristophanes rather than by Euripides.Second five series ... the same, but different.

Try summarizing any network sit-com since about 2000 that gives you that amount of information and (hopefully) makes you want to watch it.

Ken, Friday question, and something I've always wondered: given that Nick Tortelli was mentioned in passing in lots of episodes prior to his first actual appearance, there seemed to be sense of anticipation for when he'd finally show up at the bar (which didn’t happen until halfway through season 2). This sort of points towards a big guest star.

Was it ever on the cards that Danny DeVito would play the part of Nick, to reprise the DeVito/Rhea Perlman dynamic in TAXI (especially since Nick Tortelli's general scumminess was not so far removed from Louie De Palma's?) Or am I totally off base? (Not that I'm sorry Dan Hedaya got the part, which he nailed).

On audience laughter: John Cleese has often told of the "Fawlty Towers" taping where the BBC provided a busload of Icelandic tourists. Watching it, one has the very atypical sensation of laughing more than the Live Studio Audience. Most of the verbal jokes die, but they wake up for Basil beating up Manuel.

Re: the origins of The Big Bang Theory, Bill Prady told (at a live event near the beginning of the series, so I hope I'm recalling this right) that he and some friends/acquaintances were out for dinner. When it came to the bill, one passionately discussed the nuances of different tip levels, i.e. if you give 18%, then why not 20%, but then 20% would seem a bit high in regards to it being X% higher than 20% and 17% would mean this and on and on for a few minutes. In real life, I think the guy finally settled on 17.5% for an appropriate tip amount.

That became the basis for Sheldon. But, of course, you need to build that ensemble around him for ongoing stories.

If you didn't catch Barry Levinson on The Tony Kornheiser Show Tuesday, he talked about Paterno on HBO, but also delved into his movies, specifically Diner.

Without Diner, I believe there would be no Friends or Seinfeld. You can hear tales of development execs in that discussion and I'm sure up to that point, TV development people would've felt the same about 'guys sitting around busting each others' [chops]'.

I remember when Sam appeared on Frasier early in the run, the audience went wild and it kinda threw me out of the scene. But when Woody appeared many years later there was not so much as a peep, and I wondered what happened.

About KEN LEVINE

Named one of the BEST 25 BLOGS by TIME Magazine. Ken Levine is an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, DHARMA & GREG, and has co-created three series. He and his partner wrote the feature VOLUNTEERS. Ken has also been the radio/TV play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres. and Dodger Talk. He hosts the podcast HOLLYWOOD & LEVINE

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